Origins
by cherryXbomb
Summary: Dawn finally finds out her history.


Origins 

_Do I really want to do this? Do I really want to find out everything about my true self? I mean, I'm not real. I'm just some ancient mystical energy under the guise of a college freshman. Do I really want to find out how I came to be Dawn Summers_, I asked myself.

Willow Rosenberg glanced over at me and I smiled confirming that I did. I needed more than anything to find out what I was. I had written a fake biography for English filled with fake memories implanted into me by some monks. I had to find out how I came to be.

"Dawnie, are you sure you want to do this?" Willow asked me. Her dark eyes had locked my own and I nodded.

"Will, I need to have real memories of myself. I need to know what I did before I was… you know… me," I said quietly.

I sat in the center of a circle of unlit white candles. Willow walked around me and lit them all. She began to chant some Latin words that I found myself knowing. Before long, I was chanting along with her. I took one last glance at the red headed Wicca and into her now obsidian eyes before closing my crystal blue eyes to begin my voyage down memory lane, afraid of what I'd find.

The first things I saw were the stars twinkling over a midnight sky. Chants filled the infinity of night around me and I felt myself yanked out of the heavens. I then found myself in a new structure. The brick was gray and the hall was cold. Men clad in hooded brown robes entered the room and began to chant in a dialect I surprisingly knew.

"We must protect this from the Beast," one of the men said, interrupting the chant.

"We will," another confirmed. The two men glanced over at me and then went back to their chant.

The room began to spin and suddenly the new brick had become old and weathered. More men had entered and the original two had disappeared. The same chant went on and yet again, another interrupted. "The Beast is near. We must proceed."

"What did you see?" another asked.

"I saw the Beast come here and steal the Holy object. The one we were sworn to protect," the first robed man responded, his voice somber.

I took a glance across the room and saw the Dagon Sphere. The leader of the men stepped over towards the orb and began to chant, still in the strange dialect, "I consecrate thee in the name of the Dagon Monks. We ask that you channel in the energy and place it in the vessel provided."

I felt myself jerked into the Dagon Sphere and took a gasp in the real world. The next scene had two bodies lying on a concrete slab in the middle of a similar yet different room. One of the bodies I recognized as my own at age fourteen, five years prior to this moment. The other was one I didn't recognize. She had dark brown hair and dark eyes. I found myself thinking suddenly of Faith. White wisps levitated out of the brunette's body and into mine. Similar pale blue wisps went from mine into hers.

I was yanked out of the sphere and into my body. Before I saw my Key self enter my human self I saw half of the green enter the other teenager. "We must send them to be protected. Until they find each other, their true powers remain unknown," the leader of the monks intoned.

I watched as the two bodies disappeared off of the slab as if a camera had zoomed me out of first person view and into third person. Another yank and I found myself at my first meeting of my family. I found the moment I had became real. With one last yank I found myself back in Willow's bedroom glancing over at the mirror.

What I saw in the mirror wasn't me. I saw myself illuminated in a perfect pale green light. I could only see my human structure yet none of the aspects that made me me. I couldn't see any of my features, only the outline of a human half there. Willow's chanting stopped and I found myself sitting facing her in our circle of candles.

A gust of wind blew out the candles and Willow stood to turn on the lights. "Did it work?" she asked me eagerly.

"Yeah," I replied my voice quiet even to me.

"What did you see?" Willow asked, her eyes now imploring.

"The apocalypse could've happened with someone else," I told her.

"It could only happen with the Key," Willow told me, narrowing her dark eyes.

"The Key was split into two. I'm not even full Key," I responded with a bitter voice.

"But, before Sunnydale went boom, no one knew that. Did you find out when you became real?" Willow asked me.

"Yeah I did. Will, we have to find the other person," I told her.

Fast Forward One Month 

"Dawnie, are you sure you can live on campus?" Buffy asked worriedly.

"Buffy, I'm a block away from the house. Cleveland University isn't that far," I told my sister. I gave her a hug and picked up my duffel bag. "Tell Xander that he can send the rest over."

"I love you Dawn," Buffy told me. I walked off towards the brick dorm. The dorm mother showed me to my room and I found a girl that looked exactly like the one from the slab a month prior.

"Hey," she said her voice thick with a Boston accent.

"Hey," I replied.

"Take it you're the new roommate?" she asked.

"Yeah. I'm Dawn Summers."

"Hope Winters."

"My sister once knew someone named Faith Winters!" I exclaimed.

At the same time she shouted, "My sister once knew someone named Buffy Summers."

"Buffy's my sister," I responded.

"Faith's mine."

"So, we're rooming with our sister's old friends."

"Yeah. So, is Buffy still slaying?"

"Yeah, what about Faith?"

"Yeah."

"I didn't know Faith had a sister," I replied.

"Sometimes I doubt our relation. I mean, she's all tough and I'm not. You ever get the feeling that you aren't real?"

I laughed. "All the time."

A quick gasp came to me as my own personal mini-movie played inside my head. I saw the girl that the other part of the Key entered. I saw her at a funeral, then at high school, then at a court hearing. Faith was on stand. I then realized I was rooming with the other part of the Key. I gasped.

"I mean, with Faith being a Slayer and stuff, I never feel real. Kind of like somehow I'm only there to annoy."

"You wanna see something cool?" I asked her, wanting to reveal our destiny.

She nodded. I pulled out five white candles and placed one on each dresser, one on each night stand, and one on the desk. I lit them and muttered, "Show us," in Latin. We grasped each others hand and together saw the brilliant green energy in its full.

"What's that?"

"That's us. We're the Key."

"Keys."

"Better get us a key chain," I joked.

"What's a Key?" she asked suddenly.

"Powerful mystical energy. Something I thought only I was until a month ago and now, I've found my other half. Don't get pissed that you're not real though. I always felt like there's something missing and now I found it. We're the Keys," I told Faith's little sister.

"Yeah, we are."

The candles blew out with a sudden gust of wind and we returned to normal, a secret smile crossing our faces.


End file.
